On the morning of November 1st he telephoned and asked us to come in that evening for a drink with him as he had something special to tell us. Over sherry in the gracious, elegant little dining-room he told us how, the previous day, he had been examined by two well-known specialists and passed as a first-class life for an insurance policy. He had, we knew, returned from India worried about his health. He suffered from terrible headaches and frequently felt giddy, and he had an obsession that he was suffering from a tumour of the brain. He was a bachelor of thirty-seven, a very sensitive, charming person. We liked him immensely and were delighted when he confided to us that there was a girl of whom he was very fond and whom he had for some time wanted to marry. He had hesitated because of this fear of his about the tumour, but now that the two entirely independent specialists had convinced him that his fears were groundless he was going to propose to her. Her name was Rosemary, he told us, and in a few days or so he hoped to introduce her to us as his fiancée.
We drank to his future happiness and hoped that she would accept him. He seemed fairly sure about this, but he was a modest man, in spite of his excellent brain, and he said that Rosemary – Rosie, as he called her – was a very pretty, charming, and capable girl, and he was aware that a great many men must feel the same way as he did about her. We asked him back to dinner with us – but he said he was feeling very tired as he hadn’t been sleeping well, so we left him at about 7.40 p.m.
I was due at the FAP on night-shift, and Mrs Freeth had gone home. When her husband had a night off from his night-watchman duties she usually went home. I changed into uniform quickly. The sirens had gone early and the usual noise had started. One tremendous thud shook the whole house – so that even Vicki pricked up her ears and looked startled. Plaster fell from the ceiling and several things fell down in the studio above. I ran up and saw that two decorative plates had fallen and a picture had come down from the wall but the Green Cat was still erect and aloof in the window. Plaster was thick all over the studio floor like snowflakes. The bomb must have been very near. I listened, but could hear none of the activity which usually followed such a thud. The guns were barking noisily against the usual droning of the planes, but I could detect no ambulance bells, none of the excited shouts of wardens who often hailed and guided the fire and ambulance and rescue Services with ‘Here … over here…right…left,’ as the case might be.
I went out and looked down the Royal Hospital Road but beyond the fact that the sky behind Cheyne Place seemed full of a haze which I took to be the first November fog, I could see nothing unusual and not a soul was about. We had scarcely begun our meal when the telephone rang loudly. I picked up the receiver. It was the young valet who looked after David and who had let us both out of the house not more than forty minutes previously. His voice was frantic. ‘Will you please come at once – I think my master’s dead,’ he said. I asked him to repeat it, and handed the receiver to Richard. I heard Richard ask him what had happened and he repeated, ‘My master is dead…please come over, please.’
We went without further questioning. I only stopped to throw my nurse’s cloak over my dress and apron. The valet – he was only a youth awaiting his call-up – met us at the door. ‘Downstairs,’ he said. He could scarcely speak, and was terribly pale, but his control was remarkable. He took us into the room which David had shown us less than an hour previously as the place where he now slept during the Blitz.
David lay on the bed in his pyjamas. He was a curious livid colour and his eyeballs were turned up. ‘He is dead,’ said the boy, breaking down now. By the bedside was a glass and a bottle containing some tablets and my first thought was that he had taken some drug and was in a coma. I felt for a pulse but could find none in the wrist. His body was rather cold, especially his feet, but there seemed to me to be a faint pulse in the neck.
I said to the valet, ‘What happened after we left, tell us quickly.’ ‘My master said he felt sleepy,’ he said. ‘He said he didn’t want any food and that he would go and lie down for a bit. He undressed and got into bed. He asked me to bring a glass of water. While I was getting it that great bomb fell and the house shook. As I came from the kitchen with the water I heard a funny noise – a sort of gurgling groan – and I came in and found my master like this.’
‘Who is his doctor?’ I asked quickly. He told me and went up at our request to telephone him. He came down almost at once to say that the doctor declined to come as the Blitz was so bad. We telephoned two more doctors – neither could come. I was frantic – I felt that David might be saved by an injection or some urgent treatment. I could still discern a faint pulse and was trying to keep him warm. Richard shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s any good,’ he said. I telephoned Dr Thompson at St Luke’s. ‘Get an ambulance and bring him here,’ he said. An ambulance – in this Blitz. How was I to get one when we could not even get a doctor? I telephoned the FAP and explained what had happened. The FAP said that it was difficult but they would send a stretcher-party as soon as they could.
They came after what seemed an age. Getting the stretcher down the twisting narrow stairs was bad enough, and it was a grim party of men who stood by the bed. The leader was a man I didn’t know, although I knew two of the other men. He looked at David and said, ‘This man looks dead – we don’t take corpses – we’ve got our work cut out to take the injured.’ He looked at me challengingly. I said, ‘I think he’s alive – I’m not a doctor, how can I know? – but there is a pulse…’ But he did not want to take him, and said, ‘Will you state, as a nurse, that he is not dead?’
Except for the woman at the Samaritan with whom I had stayed until her death I had only seen violent deaths and I hesitated. Richard was about to intervene but the stretcher-party leader said, ‘No, it’s a nurse’s opinion we want. Do you say that this man is alive?’ and he stared challengingly at me. ‘Yes,’ I said stoutly. ‘He is alive – but if you don’t hurry he will die before we can reach the hospital.’ ‘Very well then,’ said the leader. ‘On your responsibility.’ Then began an agonizing journey up the twisting stairs, which were never made for a coffin or a stretcher carried by stalwart men. It took an endless time to get the stretcher-party up. Richard and I were guiding them – and seeing David’s body at all angles as they turned, raised and lowered, was macabre, but at last we were outside where the ambulance waited. It was a terrible night, with sudden violent rain and wind. The noise from the barrage and the bombs seemed intensified as the wind hurled the sounds at us as it rushed up Swan Walk from the Thames. The stretcher-party leader was morose – he was angry about the whole thing, and was muttering about stiffs and wasting his time. The young valet undertook to go in the ambulance with his master to the hospital. I said I would report to the FAP and follow on to see the doctor.
Richard had to go on fire-watching duty. I telephoned the FAP that I might be late because of David and ran off. It was dark and wet and I thought I would take a quick cut through Shawfield Street to the King’s Road. As I hurried through the rain with my tin hat on, it seemed to me that the curious cloud of mist or fog which I had noticed behind the Royal Hospital Road was as thick as a blanket – so thick and dark that it was difficult to see. But how could it be fog with all this wind and rain? I was carrying a masked torch such as we all carried in the black-out. It was so small a light that it revealed little, but I saw what the cloud was – it was dust, a great cloud of dust which was still rising in spite of the rain – rising from what appeared to be a great gap in Shawfield Street where a row of tall houses had stood. It was too dark to see properly, but I had seen enough to be too shocked to move, and I collided violently with someone whom I found was a half-dressed terrified woman. For a moment I was speechless, all thought of David driven out of my head. By the light of my torch I saw that the woman and I were standing on the edge of a vast crater – it loomed on every side seemingly never-ending – and the houses which had stood on that piece of ground had simply vanished! ‘There are people buried there,�
�� the woman cried, clutching at my arm. ‘Come and help me get them out. The bomb fell some time ago – and no one’s come yet!’ She was pointing to some mounds beyond the crater. I stumbled over to the heap with the horrible fear that there might be another such crater – it was too dark to see properly. Just then a woman warden appeared before us. ‘It’s no use,’ she said. ‘You can’t do anything – better to wait for the experts, they’re on their way.’ ‘Taking their time,’ said the woman violently. ‘Listen to them.’
And I could hear voices now – it was horrible… voices coming from the mounds of the ruined houses, from people entombed like the dead but fighting to get out. ‘They’re in the basement,’ went on the half-dressed woman. ‘They mostly sleep in the basement but I don’t – I was just undressing in my own room when it come – and I found myself in the street.’ With her as guide I went over to the mound from which the voices were coming…‘Help…help…’ they were crying, a thin distraught frantic wail. ‘It’s all right…They’re coming…it’s all right…they’ll get you out. Keep calm…’ I cried again and again, as close to where the wails were coming from as I could judge. It was horrible standing there listening to them and not being able to help and suddenly I felt frantic and started grabbling and scratching at the debris. ‘Don’t do that,’ called the woman warden. ‘It’s dangerous…wait…they’re coming now.’ And almost at once there was sudden violent activity in the dead, ravaged street; the wails were drowned in the jarring of brakes, the screeching of engines, and sudden short sharp commands. In the thick evil-smelling blackness it was an eerie and ghastly sight to see all the preparations being made, the paraphernalia unloaded. Did any of us realize how terribly dangerous and treacherous it was to have to excavate, shore up, and tunnel in such complete blackness for buried bodies – living or dead? Did we appreciate it until we saw it? I know that I had not until I watched the tunnelling for Mildred Castillo and that had been mostly in day-light.
It was almost impossible to recognize the individual ARP personnel and for them to recognize one another in the oblique pin-pointed rays of light from masked torches – only triangles and sharp cubist squares were illuminated – and by the angle of a nose, the quirk of an eyebrow, the set of a mouth the owners of the faces were identified. Overhead the searchlights made beautiful, intricate patterns as they tracked the raiders and pinned them in their beams, and all the time the nauseous drone of the raiding planes and the sharp bark of the ack-ack guns made a background against which the sharp terse orders of George Evans, the Incident Officer, were shouted. It was a terrifying spectacle and none of the violent sound-accompaniment drowned for me those voices still wailing from the ruins, and I called again, ‘It’s all right – they’re here. They’re here. They’ll get you out.’ The woman warden was now trying to soothe them. But their cries were beyond soothing. They could hear the guns and the bombs coming down – one could hear it in their frantic voices.
I started digging again with the half-dressed woman but the warden stopped us. ‘I’ve tried that – it’s hopeless. Better to wait for the experts.’ Better to wait!…better to wait! The half-dressed woman burst into loud hysterical weeping. I pulled her nearer to me. ‘Where’s your home?’ I asked. She pointed to a heap next to the one with the voices in it. ‘Have you anyone in there?’ I asked her. She shook her head. ‘My mother is away – went yesterday,’ she said, ‘but all those in there…’ and she began crying again. I saw that she was bleeding from her arms. I felt frantic…they were being as quick as they could under appalling difficulties but to be buried in that heap of bricks and debris with the rain now pouring down making it heavier and heavier. Oh God, I thought, let them be quick and get them out or let them die quickly.
The Incident Officer was taking charge now, and there were more and more men appearing on the scene. He shone a torch on me. ‘Get under cover. You shouldn’t be here,’ he said, and he told the weeping woman with me to report to a warden so that she could be taken to the FAP. One of the heavy rescue men was a friend of mine – the one I called Tapper because he was an expert on tunnelling and shoring up and had told me a lot about it. ‘Tap it gently first before you start anything,’ he had said. ‘Tap it – like this. Listen to the sound – if it’s holler you can tell – and you’ll know if it’s holler or solid muck you’ve got to get through,’ and he had tapped in various places in the ruins on which he was working and asked me to tell him which it was – solid or hollow. But I had not his skilled, highly developed technical sense of sound – it all sounded the same to me. ‘Never do anything without testing first. Don’t go scrabbling at it like your sausage-dog digging for a bone,’ was another of his maxims. ‘Make up yer mind where ye’re going to tunnel and test it all the way – like this…’
I saw Tapper now, grim and business-like, getting ready to work. ‘Are you on duty? If not get under cover,’ shouted a warden to me as a bomb whistled down near us. I looked round for the woman who had been with me. She had vanished. The voices were still calling from the mounds – and there were others now from other places impossible to locate in the darkness and noise. And suddenly I remembered David. What was I doing standing fascinated by the grim scene and distracted by the sounds? David – he might be dead by now. I turned sharply. ‘Take care – there are holes and it’s dangerous everywhere,’ shouted a warden. But I had started picking my way across the heaps and pits, stumbling all the way. My stomach felt full of butterflies again – my breath was short, and it hurt as I stumbled and panted up what had once been Shawfield Street to the King’s Road. I could see that there were many fires – the glare in the sky showed that – and things were rattling down, crashing masonry, bits of shell-caps, tiles dislodged, and chimney stacks. In the King’s Road a warden stopped me. ‘Are you on duty?’ I nodded and ran on to the hospital.
I was not long after the ambulance – it had had to make several detours. There were other casualties arriving as I hurried in, bomb casualties. I lent a hand to the nurses while Dr Thompson made a preliminary examination of David, who had died soon after arrival at the hospital. He said it appeared as if he had a tumour of the brain. This was startling after David’s fears and the happenings of the day. There would have to be a post-mortem, he said. I told him all I could, the valet had already told all he knew. I asked if it would have made any difference if we could have got help immediately and he said that no opinion could be given until the cause of death was known.
I went back by Smith Street as Shawfield Street was now barricaded off and I felt too exhausted to argue with wardens and police. They would let me through because of my uniform but I would not be allowed to help. I was supposed to be at the FAP. It seemed incredible that David was dead – when only a short while ago we had been drinking to his future marriage.
At the FAP they were busy – there were several casualties, including the woman with bleeding arms. I was very dirty from scrabbling in the debris and when I took off my cloak my apron was stained from helping at St Luke’s. I hoped Sister-in-charge wouldn’t notice it as I scrubbed my hands and took my place with the others who were attending to casualties. As Richard was on fire-watching neither of us would have been at home had the valet accepted our offer of a bed for the night. Kathleen was sleeping in the basement of her little shop – she had made a very comfortable shelter there, and sometimes all three of them slept there when the Blitz was very bad. It was a bad night – the All Clear did not go until five o’clock. Nine houses had been totally demolished in Shawfield Street and about twenty others were so badly damaged that they would have to be pulled down – they did not know the number of casualties.
After coming off duty from the FAP and having a cold bath (there being no gas again) and some coffee I went to see how the refugees had stood the night. The big bomb which had devastated Shawfield Street was very close to their shelter in Tedworth Square. They were subdued and silent. They had heard – but they had not seen. Shawfield Street was barricaded off and guarded still. But
news travels – they all knew far more about the casualties, the deaths, those still buried, than any of the wardens did. ‘Are they still digging?’ they asked. They were still digging – and they continued all that day and on into the night. It rained most of the day and the mess was awful. When the sirens wailed again at 6.20 p.m. they were still digging and the trapped inhabitants were able to hear not only their rescuers still working but also the warning of the commencement of another night of bombs. It made them frantic so that no amount of assurance that they would soon be out could calm them.
A policeman called during the morning to ask me for an account of what had happened at David’s the previous evening. He explained that this cursory police investigation was now used when possible in place of an inquest. I told him all I could and he said he would come back in the evening and see Richard, who was at the Ministry. David had died from a coronary thrombosis – there was no tumour of the brain. The doctor thought it possible that the tremendous thud of the Shawfield Street bomb which had shaken the house caused the heart attack which had killed him. Yet some condition must have been present when he had seen those two specialists the previous day? The doctor said, no, not necessarily, it could have been caused solely by the shock. But it was difficult to understand this – David was a young man and it seemed monstrous to think that he was dead. Dr Thompson assured me again and again that I had done all I could – that nothing would have helped. It was a strange and in many ways unsatisfactory business and, combined with the horror of Shawfield Street, was a nightmare which was so engraved on my memory that I can relive every minute of it now.
George Evans and the whole of Post Don did magnificent work that night. The bomb was Chelsea’s biggest yet and it had been difficult to locate quickly. The night had been so black, as impenetrable as thick velvet. The crater made by the bomb was so enormous that several buses could have parked in it. The wonderful accuracy of the records of residents and their whereabouts every night, checked and kept up to date every day by the wardens, was never better demonstrated than in the Shawfield Street tragedy. When all the bodies had been retrieved, and all the injured dealt with, there was a Mrs Lanham still missing. According to the wardens’ records she should have been there, and so they dug until they found her. Some of the diggers were those who used to visit Mrs Freeth and me on their way home and so we were kept up to date with the search for Mrs Lanham.
A Chelsea Concerto Page 18
